Ultrasound imaging is a widely used for examining a wide range of materials and objects across a wide array of different applications. Ultrasound imaging provides a fast and easy operate tool for analyzing materials and objects in a non-invasive. As a result, ultrasound imaging is especially common in the practice of medicine as an ailment diagnosis, treatment, and prevention tool. Specifically, because of its relatively non-invasive nature, low cost and fast response time ultrasound imaging is widely used throughout the medical industry to diagnose and prevent ailments. Further, as ultrasound imaging is based on non-ionizing radiation it does not carry the same risks as other diagnosis imaging tools, such as X-ray imaging or other types of imaging systems that use ionizing radiation.
Ultrasound imaging is accomplished by generating and directing ultrasonic sound waves into a material of interest, first in a transmit phase and subsequently in a receive phase. During the transmit phase, an ultrasonic signal is transmitted into a material of interest by applying continuous or pulsed electronic signals. During the receive phase, reflections generated by boundaries between dissimilar materials are received by receiving devices, such as transducers, and converted to electrical signals. Signals can then be processed to determine the locations of the echo sources. The resulting data can be used to display images of inside a material of interest, e.g. by displaying images using a display device, such as a monitor.
Ultrasound imaging can offer a wealth of clinical information. Specifically, ultrasound imaging can be used in abdominal ultrasound (to visualize abdominal tissues and organs), bone sonometry (to assess bone fragility), breast ultrasound (to visualize breast tissue), doppler fetal heart rate monitors (to listen to a fetal heart beat), doppler ultrasound (to visualize blood flow through a blood vessel, organs, or other structures), echocardiogram (to view a heart), fetal ultrasound (to view a fetus in pregnancy), ultrasound-guided biopsies (to collect a sample of tissue), ophthalmic ultrasound (to visualize ocular structures) and ultrasound-guided needle placement (in blood vessels or other tissues of interest). Ultrasound imaging has also been used in describing various disease states, such as diseases of the liver, breast, prostate, thyroid or other organs through single measurements of stiffness or shear wave velocity.
While ultrasound imaging provides a potential wealth of clinical information, clinicians, doctors, or experts often need to analyze and interpret ultrasound images in order to realize or otherwise identify the wealth of clinical information. Specifically, most ultrasound information is presented to a clinician for visualization in a qualitative manner, e.g. as an actual displayed image. As a clinician is limited in how much information they can interpret and ultrasound imaging, owing to its cheap, fast, and mostly non-invasive nature, produces large amounts of information, compromises must be made on the amount of information that can be presented and subsequently analyzed. For example, an image that indicates a vascular disease is present might not be presented to a clinician, thereby leading to a missed diagnosis.
Further, ultrasound imaging can lead to inconsistent diagnoses and standards of care may also result as a result of differences between clinicians. Other fields of medicine have made attempts to minimize these differences by relying on more quantitative aspects of diagnoses. It is difficult to rely on quantitative aspects of ultrasound because of its qualitative nature and presentation.
There therefore exists a need for incorporating other imaging modalities as well as other physiological measurements into analysis of ultrasound images. More specifically, there exists a need for systems and methods for combining, correlating, or otherwise using ultrasound images, and data associated therewith, and ancillary information to further derive clinical information for ailment diagnosing, treatment, and prevention.